1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor and a circuit board structure for mounting the multilayer ceramic capacitor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In accordance with the recent trend for the miniaturization of electronic products, demand for small multilayer ceramic electronic components having a large amount of capacitance has increased.
Therefore, dielectric layers and internal electrodes have been reduced in thickness and stacked in increasingly large amounts through various methods. Recently, as the thickness of dielectric layers has been reduced, multilayer ceramic electronic components having increased amounts of stacked layers have been manufactured.
Multilayer ceramic electronic components may be miniaturized and dielectric layers and internal electrodes may be thinned, and thus, the amount of stacked layers may be increased in order to realize high capacitance in the multilayer ceramic electronic components.
The thicknesses of the dielectric layers and the internal electrodes are reduced and the amounts of stacked layers are increased to thereby realize high capacitance in the multilayer ceramic electronic components; however, in the case that an increase in the influence of step portions due to the increased amounts of stacked layers occurs, reliability may be degraded.
Particularly, there is a problem in which short circuit frequency increases near a cover layer due to a large amount of stress being exerted in the pressing of a ceramic main body, whereby reliability may be degraded.
There remains a need for a multilayer ceramic electronic component in which a decrease in the reliability thereof caused by the influence of step portions may not occur, while high capacitance is realized due to increased amounts of stacked layers.